Racing At Talladega | Day In The Life of Female NASCAR Driver

We are racing in Talladega.

Hey, guys, it's Amber Balkan. I'm going to give you a little date in the life of what it looks like to be a race car driver leading up to Talladega. So first we're going to go train at Toyota Performance Center. So let's go.

We're here at Toyota Performance Center. This is where I train every day. So we're going to go get a workout in right now.

So we just got done training. We're gonna check out the recovery room. We have two recovery rooms here. First is the sports medicine room. So if there's anything wrong with us, we can see the PT there and they'll fix us up. Then we have the recovery room. The cool thing with the recovery room is it has a hot and cold tub. So next I'll take you guys to the kitchen. I love this hallway because there's a bunch of inspirational quotes. I love every one of them. But my favorite is probably AJ Foyt's, which I'll show you here. And it is determination that just won't quit. That's what it takes. And I think that's true for anything in life. This is the kitchen. This is where we do all our meal preps for the week. Also, always make a post workout recovery shake. We got a blender there. So that's what we're going to do now since we just finished our workout.

So after every workout, go in with the Formula one. I do a double scoop because you can never have too much protein, never too many gains. And I like vanilla milkshake because it goes with everything. Today we're doing triple berry, but it doesn't matter what frozen fruit we're using. Vanilla just tastes good with everything. And then we're gonna go in with quarter scoop of ignition. We lifted pretty heavy today, so I'm gonna make sure sure those muscles are being recovered.

Well.

A little coconut water for some hydration.

Next we are going to go pick up my helmet, make sure all the radios are in there properly. We're gonna go pick up my suit because we got a new suit, new helmet for Talladega. So pick that all up, make sure everything looks good. Then we're gonna take it to the sh and we'll do lots of fun stuff at the race shop.

And we're here at Venturini Motorsports. This is the race team I raced for. This is the race shop. We're going to see a lot of race cars and a lot of cool stuff in here. So let's go.

So Obviously, there's a lot of race cars in the shop. Here's one of mine here. So the reason we have different cars is for different tracks. So this weekend we're going to Talladega, which is a super speedway, 2.66 miles. So we're gonna have our super speedway car. Then we have our mile and a half cars, which we call intermediate cars. We have our short track cars, and then we also race road courses. So we'll have a car for road courses. Then we also race on dirt, so we have a car for dirt as well. So me personally, I think I have about five or six different cars. Each driver here has about five or six different cars, all made for different types of racetracks.

Since this is a new helmet with new radios, we're just going to make sure it all works. We get this done at the shop, not at the track, so that everything's already done and complete at the track. We want things to go effortlessly and nothing holding us up at the racetrack. So that's why we do all the preparation during the week at the race shop.

I'm just gonna make sure all the belts fit right.

All right, so this is my little care box for my trailer for race day. So in here we got some Optigreens, Opta reds on the go, got some level one bars, some Vegan Power Pro. Love those. And then to stay hydrated, we got the hydration sticks in there, so got a little bit of everything. Need to be fueled on race day with food and hydration, so it's good to always have this little lunch tackle box in the trailer.

See you Friday. Thanks for everything.

We just wrapped up at the shop, got everything done we needed to there. Now we're gonna go home. I'm gonna watch some race footage, go over some notes from Talladega that I had last year in the previous year, and go in the simulator, test that out a bit, and then we're pretty much done for the day.

Okay, so right now I'm looking at the restarts, how they're doing, teammate restarts. I know what cars are Venturini cars. This is 2021 footage. So I'm seeing how they work together, how they let each other in, how they're working together on the restarts, and how they're using the other cars, manipulating their air to get past them. Me and one of my teammates will be starting towards the back at Talladega, so I need to figure out how we're going to get together and work together to be able to get up Front as soon as possible.

The superspeedway races, there's always going to be a big wreck and you want to avoid that as much as possible. And in my opinion, the best way to avoid it is to be in front of it. So that means getting to the front is soon as possible. So we just finished up looking at footage, going over race notes, previous races, and now we're going to apply it on the iracing simulator. So this is my own personal one. It's static, it doesn't move or anything. There are ones that we go on at Toyota Performance center that are a little more intricate than this. And then we also have the Toyota Racing simulator that's up in Statesville where it's a whole motion one. It's like a multi million dollar one and it's exactly like the tracks. But this is really great to have at home. I can hop on any time of day, any time of night, which is great. So we have Talladega pulled up here. We're gonna do like a practice race. And I mainly do this just to get the visuals of it all having my mind and eyes used to it so that when I arrive at the track and on the track it's like, oh, yeah, I've seen this before. It's not so foreign to my brain. So I think that's probably the biggest help of this iracing simulator is the visual aspect of it because since it doesn't move or anything, we don't really get to feel what it feels like. But at least we got the visual aspect down and we get a little feeling of the draft.

It's. It's pretty realistic, not 100%, but gives you an idea for sure.

Hello.

Hey, Andy, how are you doing?

Hey, how are you?

Good. You got a few minutes?

Sure.

Sweet. So I just wanted to kind of go over with you a little bit of what we talked about in the meeting with Venturini this week and my conversations with Dave and just a little feedback on like our past races together and what we could, I guess, do better or different our approach for this race. We have. Gustine is going to be a couple rows ahead of us.

So we. He said he'll kind of hang, like he'll find me and like hang back with me to so that we can move forward. But our goal is to get to the front as soon as possible. Like, don't be afraid to say things multiple times to me.

Okay.

And then also like, if I'm, if I'm clear high or clear low, like, let me know, like Be like, like top, sol yours or bottoms, all yours or clear high. Clear low. Like, I always want to know, like, what real estate. I haven't on the track to use what I need to. So, like, just tell me, like, all, like, use anything you need or, you know, whatever you got.

Okay. Yep.

Because I do. I don't mind moving around if I need to.

Right.

This is the race I feel like I have the best chance of winning at and I want to make that happen.

Don't hesitate to call or ask questions or anything like that. That's what you're for. So.

Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you, Andy. Okay, let's have a great weekend.

Sure. Sounds great.

Let's have fun and let's celebrate in the victory lane.

That would be awesome.

Okay. Have a good rest of your week and I'll see you Friday.

All right. Thank you. You too, Andy.

Okay, see you. Bye.

Okay, bye.

We're here at Talladega. Today's practice day. We don't practice till later around 3 o' clock today, but this morning we have some appearances. Gotta meet with my crew, kind of just get a game plan for this week. Tomorrow is race day, so tomorrow's when all the action happens. But hopefully this weather holds up and we get some good laps in practice today.

Watch my eyes light up in flame Seven little Let us spell out her name.

So we' the drivers meeting. Basically, they're just going to tell us the game plan for the week, tell us the rules that we gotta follow. It's kind of boring, but we gotta go to them. So that's what we're doing.

If you're in the corner and you're not sure who you're bumping or pushing, it may not end well. Please use good judgment. And if we're gonna be aggressive, let's at least get to the end of the race before we start tearing stuff.

It's.

So we just got all done with practice. Talked to my crew chief after and just some stuff I felt in the steering box that felt a little different. So just communicated what I was feeling to him about that. Another little small change just for really driver comfort is I want to sit a little bit lower in the car. So we're going to shave a little bit of myself. Seat insert just so I can sit a little bit lower. And other than that, though, car's good. Really excited for tomorrow. And I'm really hungry, so I'm gonna eat now.

Day was perfect. The only bad part about today is my NASCAR nail came off, which I was a little sad about that.

Can't race tomorrow now.

Yeah, can't race tomorrow. Pack up. Let's go.

Welcome to the biggest, baddest, fastest racetrack on the Schedul. This is Talladega Super Speedway and the Gerald Tire 200.

Race day today. Super excited. We ended up fifth in practice yesterday, so we know our car is good. Game plan for today is just try to get to the front as soon as possible and stay there. We're making a few little adjustments on my seat to make sure I'm comfortable in the car, but other than that, we're pretty much ready to go. So race is in a couple hours and I'm ready to get to.

So just finished the race. Finished P7. We started 24th, so definitely made a lot of gains. A little disappointed. I really wanted to win this race. We, our car just didn't have quite enough speed to get there. And the track was a little different this race in the way that usually the second lane goes a little better where the bottom lane was super dominant. You had to be on the bottom and if you were the last car on the pack, that it was really hard to stay with the pack. So I had a teammate behind me when I. When she was behind me, I was good. As soon as I lost her, I knew that I was going to lose the pack too. So once we lost the pack, it was kind of hard to do anything. We just had to hold the wheel straight and hope for the best. Wish we had a little more speed and could keep up with the. With the pack. But again, top 10. Not a bad day. Thank you guys for watching a day in my life. I hope you had fun. I hope you learned something. I hope to see you all come to a race. I'd love to have you here.